I'm gonna use this blog here to just post up one interesting that i have found in my play everyday. I will try to post one each day, and you are more than welcome to join in the discussion.

I figured that since I have been spamming the hand evaluation forums a ton, I would also like to put up my thoughts somewhere where I can hopefully come back and review the progression of my thinking.

So before i post up the first hand in the next post, just a little bit about myself:

As of today September 8 2010, I am playing the $6.50 turbos on Full Tilt. Hopefully i will be moving up soon.

When I'm not playing poker, I'm thinking about poker, or writing about it. I work for PokerStrategy.com as a freelance writer (you can see all the random crap I dish out everyday in the news section of the site) and I also occasionally cover Team PokerStrategy.com (something like their official reporter I guess).

I live in Malaysia, which is an awesome country for awesome food and some pretty amazing natural scenery. If you ever think of coming to Malaysia, drop me a message and I'll take you around.

In this hand, i was dealt pretty much the nuts and it is the easiest shove for us to make here of course. One could argue for small raise or a limp to trap the other mid stacks, but i try to employ the trap sparingly.

The most interesting thing about this hand is the fact that the SB called with AT, which is an absolutely horrible call given what my ranges should be in this spot. But before we go on, let me just give a brief background on the table dynamics so far.

Basically, the BB has been short for about 3 orbits and i have been absolutely abusing the mid stacks. The BU seemed like a decent enough player although he was very chatty and was typing non stop into the chat (usually an indication of a fish). Haven't seem to much from SB, but he's not a regular.

I have been pushing any two cards from the SB, and also from the BU. But i did miss one push in the hand right before this one. It was a mistake, because i should be pushing any 2 there (i had T4s).

Right now in this particular spot however, I should not be pushing any 2. Why? because i have absolutely 0 fold equity against the short BB. Therefore my range gets narrowed to something like 77+ AT+ (This is what I think I will push anyway, not what is profitable)

But even then, my range shouldn't really matter to SB. With ATo he should always fold no matter what i'm pushing. According to SnG wiz, he should call TT+ if I push 100%. With the assumption that BB is only overcalling with the tightest of ranges, but calling my push with everything.

If however, we tighten our pushing range to around 10% (66+, A9s+ AT+), SB should only call with one hand only, AA. This is true even if our range goes up to 29% (All pairs, All aces, K9+ K5s+, QJ+ Q9s+ JT+).

Here's the SNG Wiz Analysis that i did:

So as a summary, I think this hand demonstrates clearly how the bubble is so super exploitable when he have the big stack and there is a short stack in play.

This particular stack setup where the shortie is to our right is also extra awesome because whenever the shortie folds from the CO, we hava 2 opportunities to make super profitable any 2 pushes.

Hope you liked this first one. Would like to hear any comments from you too.

I this particular instance, the shortest stack had just lost some chips so all of us can afford to widen up our calls against him already. But since he is pretty solid, i don't think he is spazzing off yet.

For the rest of us, the tie factors between us are all pretty high, so we have to be really careful.

-----------------------------

In the end, the hand gets folded to us and we have a pretty solid hand to push with. But it is also a really cagey situation because we lose so much if BB stops respecting our pushes.

I opted to give him a walk in his instance, just in case and to definitely push the next orbit if i get a similar hand. I had already pushed the last orbit, so i wanted to preserve our image.

This spot is interesting because
1. We have a really good hand
2. We have a shortie, although he is short relatively speaking, in terms of his stack depth, he is still very much alive and still has tons of fold equity.
3. So we have to be tight and risk averse but still not too tight that we blind out stack away.
4. We are pretty deep

Today I'm going to look at a hand where we can make a really loose call depending on stack depth. I saw this hand in a video hand review, so I don't have the hand history, but the SNGWiz screenshot below should explain things adequately.

So the short stack pushes here with around 4bb, and we have a read that he is pushing a lot of hands here. In the image, i set it to 42.8% which is just a random wide-ish range. That yield a slightly +EV call at 0.24, and we can call profitably with 36% of hands (all pair, all aces, K6+, K2s+ Q9+ Q8s+ JT+ J9s+ T9s+.

I played with SnGWiz and stack depth player a really big role in determining how wide we should call. If this was at 100/200 and BU has 8 big blinds, this becomes a clear fold at -1. We can then call with 23.2% (33, A3+ A2s+ KT+ K9s+ QJs) which is still pretty wide.

If we however put him on a tighter 30% range this becomes a fold. So it really also depends on our reads on the players. I think many regs here will be pushing really really wide. I flipped the hand around and if we put ourselves on the BU and assume two randoms in the blinds (assigning the static ranges of 20% to BB and 15% to SB) The BU should push 100% here and that is +1.3%. Huge!

So, even when we're pretty close to the bubble and hold a not too comfortable chip lead, We still have the license to call pretty wide here especially against thinking players on the button.

I think this is something i am not doing at all and i usually just stick to a solid value range of around 15% here. Way too tight for this spot.

So first the profile of the bigstack: I think he is horrible. I think he is not pushing ATC here even though he should be. Optimistically i'd say he is opening something like 50%.

BB is a reg, solid and will get out of the way except with the nuts. I'd imagine him to call with about a similar range that i'm calling with, around 10%

I snap called this in game but the wiz analysis is much close than i thought it would be.

If we were 1BB shorter, then this would be a really easy call. At almost equal stacks, this call is marginal at best and pretty horrible given that villain is not exploiting the bubble as much as he should be.

I like your post before last
I am also guilty of not calling wide in good spots. My ranges like you have become static for calling pushes.
I think it is the last thing people work on but it can boost your roi alot.

So i plugged the numbers into my excel ICM bubble calculator sheet and found that for SB, he will have 15.69% equity if he folds and 27.22% equity if he calls and wins. This means that he will need 57.64% equity against my range to call here. (15.69/27.22=0.5764).

Against a random range: Equilator says 55+,A3s,K8s+,Q9s+,A5o+,K9o+,QJo have the required equity (This is quite similar to the Nash range of 18.4%, 55+ A4s+ A7o+ K9s+ KTo+ QTs+, which makes sense since Nash prescribes a 100% range for me).

But than the tricky part about this hand it, ICM style analysis disregards future game considerations as <3 rightly pointed out in the thread i put up the hand We can still outfold the CO who will be all in with 110 chips in the SB if he folds the BB.

So I'm going to attempt to model this... have absolutely no clue if this is going to be correct or not.

(We = SB after this)

So lets make a few assumptions here: The only person who is gaining chips in any of the situations which we fold is the big stack on BU now. So we assume he is the only one doing the pushing.

Assuming we are the small blind, this is what happens to our equity after the next hand if we fold

- if we fold and shortie doubles 12.71%
- if we fold and shortie loses 23.79%
- if we fold and shortie folds 21.85%
- if we fold and shortie gets a walk 14.53%

This is the equity for calling now
if we call and win 27.22%
if we call and lose 0%

Lets say:

- theres a 10% chance the shortie gets a walk the next hand.
- theres a 10% chance he folds to a push
- theres a 40% theres a push and he calls and wins
- theres a 40% chance he calls and loses

So out equity if we fold, and after the next game plays outs is:
0.1(0.1453) + 0.1(0.2185) + 0.4(0.1271) + 0.4(0.2379) = 0.1824 = 18.24%

So substituting this for the equity of if we fold without modelling the next hand.

The equity we need become 67.01% (18.24/27.22)

Against a random range, we need 88+ AKs+ to get enough equity to call.

I have no clue is this method of calculation is correct, but it sorta makes sense to me. The probabilities i assumed are also pretty arbritary. So, caveat emptor.

Haven't posted hands in a few days. I think running good makes you lazy when it comes to studying your game. Anyway, time to stop procrastinating and here a hand from today, and i'll post another one from a few days ago.

I think this seems like a pretty standard shove but i was actually considering folding this. I think the main reason was because CO was playing ridiculously tight here and waiting for one of us to bust before him, and i didn't want to be that person.

This guy had pushed into us for the 3rd time in a row. He's a reg but a poor one. Also he was tilting in the chat, he just doubled up the shortie and was berating the poor guy who called with rags with less than 1bb behind.

Anyway, with those reads, i put the guy on an ATC range, which is wider than Nash. I think a lot of the multitabling regs will push ATC here. I think many of them just go, BvB, push.. (myself included sometimes) without really looking at the cards too much.

So against ATC Q9o is a call, but just a marginal one. It is breakeven at about 90% and will be really horrible if we are wrong.

Anyway, I have been forcing myself to much wider. We're potentially missing out on many +EV spots especially when a good reg is sitting to our right (or two seats to our right). In this spot, K7s is +1.2 vs ATC. QJs, A3s are both calls against a 60% range.

I'm just making myself call wider and wider to get used to it, and then looking at those calls closely in the review to adjust properly. I think if i just folded, i would never really have looked at the spots again and they would be forgotten as a standard fold.

This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by LgWz: 22.09.2010 01:05.

AQo hand:

I think nash is way off here... ICM sucks with CO that short hitting the blinds next hand, and I also think BB will call wider than that most of the time. I still think AQo is a push, but I wouldn't go much wider than it.

AQo hand:
I'm also tighter than Nash, but I still push AXs, probably ~A5o. We have enouth FE I think.

I think I had my lesson in a similar situation. In my case, shortie was a bit better, let's say 1k chips. He doubles up, I'm in bad shape because I missed some spots.

Q9o
I fold this in game. Probably correct most of the time, as it's close with an ATC push.
When I'm not sure about a decision I usualy mark the hand in HEM. That way I rewiew later (I swear I do, hehehe, even though I didn't in our sweet session)

AQo hand:
I'm also tighter than Nash, but I still push AXs, probably ~A5o. We have enouth FE I think.

I think I had my lesson in a similar situation. In my case, shortie was a bit better, let's say 1k chips. He doubles up, I'm in bad shape because I missed some spots.

Q9o
I fold this in game. Probably correct most of the time, as it's close with an ATC push.
When I'm not sure about a decision I usualy mark the hand in HEM. That way I rewiew later (I swear I do, hehehe, even though I didn't in our sweet session)

Hey man, sorry about going off the other day. My internet went off for a bit and i forgot to turn my skype back on later.
Looking forward to do another one soon. Hopefully you've gotten your new internet connection already

Remember the bad call made by the reg from a few posts ago? Today I played against him and i guess the situation was reversed this time around. I was the caller and he shoved, although the shortie was q bit deeper this time,so we should be playing much closer to ICM ranges.

I ran this through wiz and this is a really close spot. It is breakeven if he is shoving 75%+ which I think this particular guy should be capable of. Nash has him pushing 100% and i think he is solid enough to be playing very close to the Nash ranges.

I think the lesson for today is how super sensitive calling on the bubble can be. If we are right here, we are reasonably +EV, but if we are wrong about villain's ranges, things can turn super super super horrible for us.

Also, being in 2nd/3rd also puts us in many tricky spots. Especially since we were so close in stack. If we swapped stacks with 1st or 4th place, this would be a snap call.

This was such a sweet spot to pwn the button with a super wide range. I did pass this up because i got dealt 72o and had already pwn3d him the last orbit, do didn't want to give him a free double up in case he makes a stupid call. But in general, i think we can shove any 2 here.

The big blind should be tight and fold most of his hands even with good odds because he's want us to go at it with BU and bust BU. Once BB folds, BU just can't call with almost everything.

Cool spot to pick up 1,000 chips for almost 0 risk. Even if we lose, were still way ahead.

The blinds have gotten really huge on the bubble and everyone is quite short.

So in this hand, we're getting 2.3:1 to call and A4o is a pretty good hand here. However, this is not an any 2 spot because of the bubble factors, in fact its far from it. In game, I wasn't even really looking at pot odds (wasn't paying enough attention) that much. A4o is of course too good to fold here, especially against our direct opponent.

I think BU, a good reg, is definitely pushing wider than what Nash prescribes here. He's short, CO is not giving him any walks, pushing BvB into the big stack is as risky if not riskier than pushing into me, and i'm not looking like i'm going to spazz out and donk away my chips here.

I think he's pushing lots of suited queens, all suited kings, and many unsuited kings as well. Which gives about a 35% range.

Against that, we should call 50!

Which is on one hand, surprising, because we're at the bubble. But on the other hand not, because the pot odds as so amazing. We of course also won't bust if we lose altho we're quite crippled.

Let's play around with a few scenarios and see how that changes the scenario

1. If we are give some of our chips to the CO, and become equal stacked to the BU, our range does not change at all. But from that point down, when our stack reduces we should call even wider. So we can say that this is just a function of the pot odds.

2. If it was the big stacked SB pushing into us with ATC. Even though we're now a much bigger favourite hand range wise, we should be so tight here. Because there is someone else shorter than us and because not the pot odds are much worse. If we get shorter, then of course our range becomes wider, but at this current stack size its only about 10%. Even if we get 2:1 odds, this is not an ATC call spot (assuming BU is still shorter than us), in fact we should only call something like 33% even then. (i set BU in this case to be 2bb deep.